Editing OTPedia is really easy. Below, you will find a guide to the basic stuff that will be enough to edit and create articles most of the time. If you need something more advanced, like inserting images in your articles or adding a reference section, see our detailed guide.

OTPedia, like all Wikis, uses Wiki markup. This means that there are certain characters that you put in your text while editing to change the way your article will then appear to the reader. For example, if you want to make some text bold, you will need to insert a special character where the text should begin to appear bold and another character where the text should stop to appear bold. In examples below, text with these special characters, so the text that you will see while editing something on OTPedia, will be highlighted in blue, and the text that the reader will see as a result of your using these characters will be highlighted in green.

What you can do on OTPedia

To make any edits on OTPedia, you must be logged in. If you don't have an OTPedia account, sign up and wait till your request is approved by an admin. Once your account is ready, you can start contributing to existing articles or adding new pages.

Main (English) portal vs other language pages

The main section of OTPedia contains articles and guides in English, useful for either the whole Open Translation Project community or for volunteers who transcribe or translate into English.
On the left, you will find links to other language sections of OTPedia. These contain articles useful for specifically volunteers working in those languages, like information on common mistakes or links to dictionaries and resources on grammar or punctuation. In some languages, there is rich and varied content, while in others, you will need to start by editing the main page to add some general introductions and sections.

Editing existing articles

You can update obsolete links, add missing links, fix typos and other mistakes, or add more examples to existing OTPedia articles. For example, if you notice that the article on language resources in your language is missing a link to the most useful free online dictionary, you can add that link to the article. To edit an existing article, log in, go to the article and click "Edit" at the top of the article page. If you only want to edit one subsection, click the title of that section in the table of contents and click the "Edit" link at the top of the section. Before you save your edits, click "Show preview" to make sure everything is formatted in the way you want it to be. Upon saving, add a description of your edit, to allow users to easily figure out what has been changed by reading the editing history.

Do not change anything that may influence the way that people work in the Open Translation Project. We have a few official guides here with specific rules, e.g. "the reading speed of a subtitle should not go over 21 characters per second." If you feel anything like that should be changed, send an email to OTP staff at translate@ted.com, explaining your idea. Changing these rules may confuse a lot of users and result in mistakes which will take a long time to fix. We want to hear your ideas and we are always open to improving our guidelines, but we would like to ask you to talk to us first.

Once you are certain that the article does not exist yet, write it offline using a text editor. Note that rich text editors like Ms Word, Pages or Google Docs will automatically change some special Wiki characters to others. Use a plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit to make sure that when you copy your article to OTPedia, the formatting based on the special Wiki symbols and characters will be preserved.

Once your article is ready, search for the title you want it to have on OTPedia. If there is no article with that title, OTPedia will give you a link that will allow you to create a new article with that title ("Create the page "My new article" on this wiki!"). Click the link, paste the article you wrote offline and submit it. If you made a mistake in the title, click the down arrow (triangle) next to the "View history" tab and select "Move" to change the title. Don't overuse this feature, because if OTPedia users had shared your article with the original title, their links will not work anymore if the title is changed.

To allow other OTPedia users to find your new article, use the information below to add it to the right category page or even edit your language's main page to add a link to your article there.

How to write or edit an article

Below, you will find information on a few basic formatting tags, symbols and characters used in Wiki markup. You should be able to make most edits and write most articles by just using the info below. If you need something more advanced, see this guide.

Article sections and headings

You should divide your article into subsections for easier navigation. OTPedia will use your section headings to automatically generate a clickable table of contents at the top of the article. You can add multiple levels of sections and subsections within sections. For example, what you are now reading is a subsection of the section titled "How to format the article text."

To define how "deep" a section is within other sections, add "equals" signs. So, you would surround the heading of the first-level subsection with one "equals" sign on each end, like this:

=Main subsection=

If you needed some subsections within that section, you would add more "equals" signs to their titles, like so:

=Main subsection=
Intro text.
==First subsection in Main subsection==
Some text in this subsection.
==Second subsection in Main subsection==
Some other text in this subsection.

And you can also add subsections in subsections, by adding more "equals" signs. For example:

=Main subsection=
Intro text.
==First subsection in Main subsection==
Some text in this subsection.
===First subsection in "First subsection in Main subsection"==
Some other text in this subsection.

Bold and italics

To make some text bold, surround it with three apostrophes: '''.
When you type this:
'''These words''' are in bold

...the readers wil see this:
These words are in bold

To use italics, surround some text with two apostrophes: ''.
When you type this:
''These words'' are in italics

...the readers wil see this:
These words are in italics

Bullet points and numbered lists

To use bullet points, simply put an asterisk (*) before the line of text to be preceded by the bullet point. For example, when you type this:

*Bullet point one
*Bullet point two
*Bullet point three

...the readers will see this:

Bullet point one

Bullet point two

Bullet point three

To make a numbered list, simply use the number symbol (#) before each consecutive line of text that is meant to be an item in the list. For example, when you type this:

#Item one
#Item two
#Item three

...the readers wil see this:

Item one

Item two

Item three

Category tags

If you add a category tag at the end of the article, a link to the article will appear in an automatically generated page that brings together all of the articles with that tag. This makes it easier for people to find related pages. For example, all OTP Stories are nicely gathered together on.

To have your article appear on the right category page, simply put the right category tag at the bottom of it. A category tag looks like this: [[Category:Name of category]]. You can find a list of categories here.

Links to other stuff on OTPedia and to sections within your article

You can easily link to either a whole article or a specific section of an article on OTPedia.

Linking to the whole article

First, get the title of the article. Go to the article on OTPedia. In your browser's address bar, you will see something like this:

http://translations.ted.org/wiki/How_to_Tackle_a_Transcript

When you want to link to something on OTPedia, the title of the article is everything that comes after "wiki" in that URL (page address). So in the example above, the title of the article is How_to_Tackle_a_Transcript (with the underscores).

Now, let's say you're talking about the guide to transcribing and you want to save the reader the trouble of looking it up on OTPedia and give them a clickable link right away. You start with this sentence:

If you want to learn more about transcribing talks, see this guide.

You want the reader to be able to go directly to the article by clicking "this guide." To do so, use this pattern:

[[Title_of_article|words the reader can click on]]

So, two square brackets, the title of the article separated from the clickable text by a pipe character and two square brackets. Using the example above, when you type this:

If you want to learn more about transcribing talks, see [[How_to_Tackle_a_Transcript|this guide]].

...the readers will see this:
If you want to learn more about transcribing talks, see this guide.

Linking to a section of another article

Sometimes, instead of linking to the whole long article, you will want to send the reader to a specific subsection. For example, you might want to bring the reader's attention specifically to the rules of representing sound in transcripts, not transcribing as a whole:

In addition to (Applause) and (Laughter), you will sometimes find other types of sound representation in subtitles. Learn more here.

You can link to subsections of an article using the exact same pattern as when linking to the whole article. The only exception is that you first need to obtain the title of the article with the subsection. To do so, go to the article on OTPedia and click the subsection in the table of contents. In your browser's address bar, you will see something like this:

You may notice that the hash (#) and the title of the subsection were added to the title of the article. In order to link to that subsection, you need to copy the title of the article with the hash and the title of the subsection. Using the example above, when you type this:

In addition to (Applause) and (Laughter), you will sometimes find other types of sound representation in subtitles. Learn more [[How_to_Tackle_a_Transcript#Sound_information|here]].

...the readers will see this:
In addition to (Applause) and (Laughter), you will sometimes find other types of sound representation in subtitles. Learn more here.

Linking to a section within your own article

You can link to a subsection within your own article in exactly the same way as you would link to a section of another article. Using this article as an example, when you click the section "Bold and italics" in the table of contents, you will see this in your browser's address bar:

http://translations.ted.org/wiki/How to edit OTPedia#Bold and italics

Copy everything that comes after "wiki/" and use the following pattern. When you type this:

[[How_to_edit_OTPedia#Bold_and_italics|This]] is a link to another section in the article you are reading.

...the readers will see this:
This is a link to another section in the article you are reading.

Links to other pages

If you want to link to resources not on OTPedia, like dictionaries, resources on grammar and punctuation or TEDTalks, use this pattern:

[link clickable text]

For example, you may want to add a clickable link to the following sentence:

To learn more about maintaining the right reading speed, watch this tutorial.

To do so, find the link (in this case, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvNQoD32Qqo). Then, when you type this:

To learn more about maintaining the right reading speed, watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvNQoD32Qqo this tutorial].

...the readers will see this (with "this tutorial" being a clickable link):

To learn more about maintaining the right reading speed, watchthis tutorial.